


They who made you

by reshirama



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: A2 centric, F/F, Spoilers for YorHa stage play, Vague tragic and gay, spoilers for all routes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-04 03:24:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12160527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reshirama/pseuds/reshirama
Summary: ...they made me too-----And when the sun goes down, and the desert is so cold that she can feel it in her circuits, she talks to 2B.This is just a phantom 2B, of course, mapped out of what memories A2 was given. It’s a tiny part of a multifaceted picture, but A2 is lonely and she’ll take what she can get. She is silent, has been for two years. She has considered going back to camp to see Anemone, but she thinks the guilt might kill her. But all the times she has considered going there, it’s been because she's lonely.---------A2 cries in the desert with 2B's sword.





	They who made you

**Author's Note:**

> this is gay and has no meaning or anything i just love these two so much  
> it's also very headcanon based i hate life  
> title is from fish by wye oak

 When A2 closes her eyes and presses 2B’s sword to her lips, she can see 2B there. Aching and wavering, like a ghost in her heart, she watches her form dance behind her eyelids, just so she doesn’t feel alone. Well, she has Pod, but he barely counts.

 Sometimes she wants to throw the sword away, wants to bury it in the desert and then blow it up. It’s a reminder of her weakness. But 2B reminds her so much of No4, and of herself. The last one is to be expected. They have the same personality type, after all. But the first one strikes her right in the heart, because it’s been two years and she still hasn’t managed to mend her heart.

 Her  _ heart _ . A human term. She has no flesh and blood, only steel. She sometimes looks into the human memories she was given, the smiling face of  _ her _ grandmother, the sensation of warm flesh beneath her hands that is so alien to her now.

She has never been as aware of her inhumanity as now, as 2B’s (2E’s?) memories tell her they never existed at all. She’d almost expected it. The laughing girls in red seemed so gleeful, there was something that had been nagging at her about it.

 But the words, from that Commander’s mouth (the same one who had sent her down to Earth, knowing it would be to her death, who had ordered Seed’s death):  _ There are no more humans, 2E. _

 Her suffering? Meaningless. Her friends’ deaths? Useless. A pathetic war, against an enemy whose motives had been mapped out in a similar way to her own. Aliens, dead, according to 2B’s memories. Humans too. Just their tools left behind. A terrible proxy war that had no end, because the ones at the top didn’t know  _ how _ .

A2 doesn’t know how to stop either, if she’s honest. Her sword sings through machines like it was always meant to. She slices them, she spits on them, she steps on their bodies. They weren’t the ones who killed her friends, but they’re the closest she’ll get to the red girls. 

 And when the sun goes down, and the desert is so cold that she can feel it in her circuits, she talks to 2B.

 This is just a phantom 2B, of course, mapped out of what memories A2 was given. It’s a tiny part of a multifaceted picture, but A2 is lonely and she’ll take what she can get. She is silent, has been for two years. She has considered going back to camp to see Anemone, but she thinks the guilt might kill her. But all the times she has considered going there, it’s been because she’s lonely. A2 wasn’t always quiet. She remembers chatting away, cheerful as anything, while No21 stood around sighing and rolling her eyes. No16, teeth bared with bloodlust, the adrenaline seeker, would laugh and egg them one, while No4 would nudge A2’s arm and laugh, eyelashes fluttering. 

A2 tells 2B all about them. She tells her about Rose and Lily and Aster, tells her about the time they had with the Resistance, tells her about the Descent, about how she and Anemone were the only ones to make it out and the bombs that Command had strapped to their chests, and how No4 had saved her. 

 Then she tells her about the times she had after- the first time she cried with anger, the first time she experienced cold, the first time she killed an android (how similar it had felt to a machine), the first time she had spent a night that she wasn’t dreaming about No4 saying goodbye and thanking her for giving her life  _ meaning _ . Their lives had never had meaning, A2 had thought at first. But then she had realised that she had been given a goal with No4’s death; revenge, was, at least, a goal, if impossible. But the Red Girls, their words- they’re alive, A2 can feel it. She can kill them. If it kills her, she’ll kill them.

 Occasionally, 2B talks back. Her voice is muted, soft and gentle, devoid of any expression. It’s entirely unlike the voice that A2 remembers from their various encounters over the years, full of that entirely forbidden thing: emotion.

 2B and 9S weren’t the only pursuit androids sent after her- she also remembers E4, who had sounded so eerily like No4 that A2 had nearly cried- but they were the ones who came back the most. Their encounter in the Forest Kingdom had been their fifth brush over two years. A2 still remembers the look in 2B’s eyes-  _ You remember me, don’t you? _ She had thought.

 She now realises that 2B had always remembered her. They would have never wiped her memories, would they?

But now 2B’s voice is level, monotone. But it’s a comfort all the same. 

 “You remind me of 9S.” she says. A2 laughs, harsh. 

“Make up your mind, 2B. You said that you and I are the same earlier.” A mocking tone, but the battle with Hegel left her unsettled for days.

 “We are all the same.” 2B says, and A2 gulps. We are all the same.

 2B talks more. The same phrases pop up, and the same topics- the memory bank isn’t endless, after all. She talks about 9S. She talks about base. Things have changed, A2 says to her. It wasn’t like that when she was there.

 A2 tells her about Seed, about how they used to use outdated models to practice weapons, and occasionally they just… disappeared. 

 A2 misses Seed more than she can say. She misses No4 more than she can say. She even misses 2B, the 2B presented in these memories, the broken 2B with her weakness and her fragility, and the 2B she saw when Command wanted her dead. 

 2B doesn’t move, aside from her mouth. Her blindfold is still on. One day, A2 reaches out.

 “Take it off.” The memory does not move. Of course she doesn’t. She’s not real. 

“Please take it off. I haven’t worn mine in years. We don’t need them. We never needed them.” The memory space warps slightly as A2’s hand brushes 2B’s cheek, and catches the blindfold and pulls it away.

 2B has no eyes. Of course she doesn’t. There’s just static there, crackling where life should have been. A2 whimpers for the first time in months, and the memory space shatters. The sword clatters to the floor. A2 feels the tears on her face and chokes.

 She doesn’t want this. 

 She moves out of the desert, and she’s falling apart. She can feel it in her body. Pod requests she fix herself, but she would be more than willing to let herself die if it came to that.

 She has been told to live on twice now. But what for? A2 was living for revenge before this whole mess began, but it feels empty now, hollow, like her own words are.

She hasn’t entered 2B’s memory in days. She’s been too afraid, if she’s going to be honest. The crackling static in the eyes, beneath the blindfold- A2 would have prefered them to be virus red. She thought she had saved enough of 2B- she thought she had saved someone.

 She cannot even remember everything about No4’s face, No21’s sneer, No16’s strange gait. The things given to them by the world, by their experiences- in her memory, the only thing left of them, are being washed away to their factory settings, back to just their names, numbers, and then to nothing. She cannot allow that to happen, and she will not allow it to happen to 2B either.

She picks up the sword again. The memory space flickers back, and there is 2B’s memory shape, eyes still crackling with white noise, blindfold on the floor.

 A2 sees a memory flicker within them- a 2B with younger eyes and a spring in her step, with a 9S who’s laughing.

_ Nines, take this seriously! _ her voice rings, 9S’ cackle around them.

 A2 sees, layered on top of them, herself, younger, being teased by No4. She hears the laughter mingled. She sees a universe where they could meet. She sees No4 and 9S grinning over their shoulders, twin smiles across their faces.

 The memory of 2B has static tears trickling down her face. A2 walks across and presses her forehead to 2B’s, and breathes, just breathes. 

 The hissing, spitting nothingness of no memory creeps over her hands and she gulps, and then breathes and leans in and kisses 2B, or what is left of her, on the mouth.

 “I’ll stay alive. I’ll look after him. I promise.” she whispers. And then she drops the sword, opens her eyes and wipes the tears away. “Pod. The fastest way to the Resistance Camp.” She thinks of Anemone, alone for two years. She thinks of the beds, empty and creaking. She thinks it’s time to go home. 

 And so she goes.


End file.
